Empire Center for Public Policy

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The Empire Center for Public Policy (formerly the Empire Center for New York State Policy) is a conservative state-based think tank "dedicated to promoting freedom, opportunity and enterprise" in New York, according to the organization's website.[1] The Empire Center is a project of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research and a member of the State Policy Network.[1]

Ties to the Bradley Foundation

Bradley detailed the most recent grants in internal documents examined by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD). Below is a description of the grant prepared by CMD. The quoted text was written by Bradley staff.

2016: $50,000 to support general operations. If distributed, this will be the first Bradley grant to the Empire Center for Public Policy (ECPP). According to the grant proposal record, Bradley wants to fund ECPP to bust unions in New York using tactics the Freedom Foundation has employed in Washington and Oregon. ECPP will use Bradley funds to encourage day care workers to drop out of unions and stop by dues. “Empire is willing to learn from and seems to have the stomach for implementing the overall strategies and confrontational tactics of the Freedom Foundation in pursuing Bradley’s programmatic employee rights goals – in a state that matters, given its government unions’ funding of the Left, its causes, and its other organizations nationally.”

ALEC is a corporate bill mill. It is not just a lobby or a front group; it is much more powerful than that. Through ALEC, corporations hand state legislators their wishlists to benefit their bottom line. Corporations fund almost all of ALEC's operations. They pay for a seat on ALEC task forces where corporate lobbyists and special interest reps vote with elected officials to approve “model” bills. Learn more at the Center for Media and Democracy's ALECexposed.org, and check out breaking news on our PRWatch.org site.

Ties to the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity

The Empire Center for Public Policy has hosted writers from the ALEC-connected Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity, which screens potential reporters on their “free market” views as part of the job application process.[2] The Franklin Center funds reporters in over 40 states.[3] Despite their non-partisan description, many of the websites funded by the Franklin Center have received criticism for their conservative bias.[4][5] On its website, the Franklin Center claims it "provides 10 percent of all daily reporting from state capitals nationwide."[6]

Franklin Center Funding

Franklin Center Director of Communications Michael Moroney told the Center for Public Integrity (CPI) in 2013 that the source of the Franklin Center's funding "is 100 percent anonymous." But 95 percent of its 2011 funding came from DonorsTrust, a spin-off of the Philanthropy Roundtable that functions as a large "donor-advised fund," cloaking the identity of donors to right-wing causes across the country (CPI did a review of Franklin's Internal Revenue Service records).[7]Mother Jones called DonorsTrust "the dark-money ATM of the conservative movement" in a February 2013 article.[8] Franklin received DonorTrust's second-largest donation in 2011.[7]

The Franklin Center was launched by the Chicago-based Sam Adams Alliance (SAM),[11] a 501(c)(3) devoted to pushing free-market ideals. SAM gets funding from the State Policy Network,[12] which is partially funded by The Claude R. Lambe Foundation.[13]Charles Koch, one of the billionaire brothers who co-own Koch Industries, sits on the board of this foundation.[14] SAM also receives funding from the Rodney Fund.

Funding

The Empire Center received $127,532 from DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund between 2012 and 2013, "two funds that have been closely tied to the Kochs but which obscure the percentage of their grants coming from Koch money." A full list of DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund grant recipients is available here.